Thomas Malbon

Thomas MALBON was a feltmaker and alderman of Congleton, Cheshire and was Mayor in 1685/6 and again in 1694/5.

In or around the year 1646, another Thomas Malbon left home and family and moved to the town of Congleton, there to learn the craft of feltmaking. For the next seven years, under the terms of a written contract which doubtless cost his father or guardian a fee, Thomas was housed, fed, clothed and treated as a member of his master’s family, while he absorbed the various skills involved in the production of felt hats, from raw materials to finished product.

The Malbons – A Local Family by Barbara Lynch, BBC Stoke & Staffordshire, 13 November 2014

Number 201 in The Malbons: Eight Hundred Years of Family History (2005) by Barbara Lynch

The parentage of Thomas Malbon the feltmaker of Congleton is unclear. He may either be one of the following second cousins, once removed:

• Number 119, the son of Joseph Malbon and Margaret Stonely or
• Number 89, the son of Hamnett Malbon and Margery Furnivall.

Without the apprentice records (which are missing or were never recorded) it is not possible to say definitively which are the cirrect parents, but Thomas had a son called Joseph (following family tradition), plus we know there was a feltmaker called William Mottershead in Congleton and Joseph Malbon had connections with Mottersheads, through his mother (see Lynch, chapter 3). So the most likely father is Joseph Malbon as indicated here.

The other Thomas Malbon is here.